Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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He Asserts, That Children And Full Grown
Persons Not Only Eat This Bread Without Suffering In Their Health, But
Also
Great pieces of pure clay (muchos terrones de pura greda.) He
adds that those who feel a weight on the
Stomach physic themselves
with the fat of the crocodile which restores their appetite and
enables them to continue to eat pure earth.* (* Gumilla volume 2 page
260.) It is certain that the Guamos are very fond, if not of the fat,
at least of the flesh of the crocodile, which appeared to us white,
and without any smell of musk. In Sennaar, according to Burckhardt, it
is equally esteemed, and sold in the markets.
The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern than most of
the other missions. The Ottomacs are a restless, turbulent people,
with unbridled passions. They are not only fond to excess of the
fermented liquors prepared from cassava and maize, and of palm-wine,
but they throw themselves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we
might say of madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather
the long pods of a mimosacea which we have made known by the name of
Acacia niopo,* cut them into pieces, moisten them, and cause them to
ferment. (* It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an
Inga. We brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the
Ottomacs and the sepa of the Maypures) that yields seeds, the flour of
which is eaten at Uruana like cassava.
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